Triple treat (16 page)

" With Rhandee?"

"With Rhandee's roommate Darcy Lynn. I'm being passed around," he added rather proudly. He sauntered out, looking inordinately pleased with himself and the world in general.

"That's nothing to brag about, Ben," Alexa called after him, the disapproval in her tone unmistakable. Shaking her head, she reached for her book.

Nine

Ben's prediction that Tyler would be spending a lot of time in Carrie's newly air-conditioned house proved to be right on target. For the next several weeks, hardly a day went by that Carrie and the triplets didn't see Tyler. He arrived at their house after work to have dinner and spend the evening with them. They swam in his pool and he returned to their place for the children's bedtime rituals.

Tyler had always enjoyed business traveling, scheduling more trips than necessary, but now being away had lost its allure. He cut way back on his travel schedule, taking advantage of teleconferences and fax machines; it was more cost-efficient and, most importantly, it kept him in town. With Carrie.

He was in town on weekends, too, going to Carrie's house before she left for the hospital, and he invariably ended up staying with the children after she'd gone. Tyler struck up a genuine friendship with Alexa, but Ben, who sometimes

dropped by, treated him with an ingratiating adulation that both irritated and amused him.

There was certainly nothing ingratiating or adulatory in the way Carrie treated him. If Tyler said or did something that she didn't like, she let him know it. Immediately. Still, considering their circumstances were so different, they were remarkably compatible and seemed to grow more so with each passing day. For two people who'd come from two such different worlds, they had a lot to talk about. Conversation flowed easily and naturally between them, but they also could be quietly companionable, enjoying each other in relaxed silence.

Not that silence reigned very often—not in a house with toddler triplets. The children were ever present, and Tyler's relationship with each one grew as the days flowed into weeks. He found himself looking forward to their greeting him at the door each evening, jabbering excitedly at the sight of him, pulling and tugging at him, demanding to be picked up. It was incredibly appealing to be welcomed so wholeheartedly, and Tyler found the entire "homecoming scene" impossible to resist.

He looked forward to seeing Carrie just as much, though she didn't fling herself at him at the door, the way her children did. But the sight of her smile and her blue eyes shining with warmth was a reward all its own. He'd thought she was attractive from the start, but she seemed to grow prettier daily. He found himself thinking about her often during the day, remembering previous conversations, anticipating new ones. In his head, he heard her laughter and saw the animation in her face, the alert intelligence gleaming in her eyes.

It was as if his mind had recorded and stored a thousand images of Carrie and he could call up any one of them as quickly as a computer locating a file. He visualized her face alive with tenderness and humor as she dealt with the triplets' antics, the way she rolled her eyes when Ben spouted

one of his more outrageous lines. He saw her pensive and earnest and even flushed with anger. All the images interested and excited him, but when he pictured her dreamy-eyed, her lips moist and parted, her blue eyes intense with desire, the way she'd looked every time they had kissed, his blood heated and his body grew hard.

But though he wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman during his prolonged bachelorhood, he had yet to take Carrie to bed. It was most un-Tremainelike behavior to deny himself what he wanted most, and Tyler was loath to question why his sex life had unexpectedly gone chaste.

He told himself that his constitution was unable to handle any more of the frustrating stop-starts that had plagued his and Carrie's earlier lovemaking attempts. If the children or Alexa or Ben weren't around to interrupt them, there was always the ghost of the sainted Ian Wilcox to be invoked, so why begin at all?

After all, there were viable alternatives to keeping his sexual energy in check. Tyler stepped up his exercise regime at his club, increased his racquetball, golf and tennis playing times and took frequent, lengthy cold showers. The other alternative, to cool his passion with other women while keeping his relationship with Carrie platonic, held no appeal for him. It was unthinkable—repugnant, even.

He was not only taking a sabbatical from dating, he also was taking a sabbatical from sex, Tyler decided. Now if only his celibate life-style would free him from his desire for the one woman he dreamed about day and night.

So far, it hadn't. The more time he spent with Carrie, the more he wanted her. She was affectionate by nature and seemed to think nothing of touching him, leaning against him, even throwing her arms around him for an occasional, spontaneous hug. Tyler responded in kind, draping his arm around her, taking her hand to hold. Not a day passed that didn't include some physical contact with Car-

rie, but Tyler didn't attempt to cany it further. He didn't pull her into his arms for one of those scorching kisses that had the power to send them both reeling, He might stare at the slender curve of her neck, at her breasts and her hips and her legs, but he didn't touch.

He didn't dare. The feelings he had for Carrie were so intense he sometimes felt overwhelmed^ the emotions she evoked within him were so utterly unlike anything he had ever experienced that he didn't dare risk combining them with the ferocious power of sex. He'd never been as close to any woman as he was to Carrie, and adding passion and sex augured an intimacy he could not yet handle. Instead, he took refuge in the more comfortable fiction of his sexual sabbatical with his good friend and neighbor Carrie Shaw Wilcox.

The Fourth of July fell on a Wednesday, providing a holiday in the middle of the week, rather than the three-day holiday weekend Tyler would have preferred. Still, he had plans which he shared with Carrie.

"I have a beach house in Rehoboth. Just a small place, nothing fancy," he told her the Monday evening before the holiday, as they floated side by side in his pool. She was pulling Emily on a pink plastic surfboard with a built-in seat, and he tugged Franklin and Dylan in the little blow-u] boat. *'Since you finally have a weekend off, I thought we'c take the kids down there. We can leave Friday night and come back Sunday evening."

He didn't add that he hadn't been to the beach at all this summer, that he'd been fielding calls from friends, acquaintances and would-be sycophants who wanted to know why Tyler Tremaine, usually a weekend fixture at the Del-> aware shore and a major player on the summer party scene, had been conspicuously absent from his seasonal stomping grounds. If they all knew he'd been spending his weekends with his next-door neighbor's children—while their mother

was at work—they wouldn't have believed it. Sometimes, he still didn't believe it, either.

"We'll leave late Friday, to beat the weekend traffic on the Bay Bridge, 1 ' Tyler continued. "Around ten o'clock."

Carrie pushed her wet hair from her face. "Oh, Tyler, I don't think so."

"They'll love it, Carrie. The house is right on the beach. They can play in the sand and in the ocean and there's a small boardwalk with kiddie rides and—"

"But it takes over two hours to get there. They've never been in a car for that long a drive. And where will they sleep and eat, once we're there? There are no cribs or high chairs. It would be impossible. No, Tyler. Thank you, but we just can't-"

"Carrie, we're going," he said firmly. "I've been thinking about it. These children never go anywhere, not even to the supermarket. And while I can understand how it would've been overwhelming—and way too difficult—to take them out when they were infants, they're getting older now."

"They come here, to your pool," Carrie reminded him. "You even let them inside your house now and then," she added, smiling.

"And think how much they love to come over here, because it's a change, it's something different. They're bright, curious kids and they should be exposed to other things, to other places and more people. They'll be stunted, emotionally and intellectually, if they never leave their house and don't see anyone but you and me and Alexa and Ben."

She stared at him thoughtfully. "I—think you might be right. No, I know you are. In fact, what you've said sounds like something my father might say."

"You mean I'm on the same wavelength as Colonel Shaw?" Tyler feigned shock. "Now there's food for thought."

Game laughed. "Don't let Ben's exaggerated stories about Dad fool you. My father is very smart and very strong. You'd like him. In fact, I think the two of you are a lot alike."

"High praise indeed from a dyed-in-the-wool daddy's girl," Tyler said lightly. "Alexa and Ben have told me more than once that you're the colonel's favorite.'-

Carrie splashed water at him. "That's absurd. Our parents have no favorites. What other stuff do you and Alexa and Ben talk about when I'm not around to defend myself?"

"Mmm, wouldn't you like to know?" he teased. "So, we're on for this weekend then? We can rent cribs and high chairs down there. As for the length of the drive... since we'll be leaving later, the kids will probably sleep the whote way."

Carrie nodded her head. "Tyler, do you think I'm over-protective?" she asked a moment later. "You know, a—a smothering type of mother?"

"Of course not. It's natural for the mother to want to keep her babies close."

"And I guess it's the father's role to make sure the kids get to interact with others and get out of the nest and into the world little by little," Carrie replied, then realized what she'd said, how it sounded. Tyler was not her children's father/

It would be a grave mistake on her part to let herself think of him as a surrogate daddy. After all x he had told her in no I uncertain terms that he didn't want to play that role. But | that seemed like ages ago; words spoken by another man about hypothetical children that had nothing to do with Tyler and the triplets.

These past weeks, she and the children had come to count on Tyler being around, to look forward to seeing him stride | up the walk or through the gap in the backyard hedge at the

end of his workday. On the rare evenings he had late meetings or business-related dinners, they missed him. Terribly.

Carrie didn't ask Tyler why he was spending so much time with them. She suspected that he himself didn't know, that being with her and the triplets was something of a lark or a whim for him. A temporary one, to be sure, despite Ben's embarrassingly obvious expectations for the relationship. Carrie entertained no such delusions; though she knew she was in love with Tyler, she foresaw no fairy-tale ending.

Only an ending. A painful one for both her and the trip? lets who loved "Ty r " too. What were they going to do when he stopped coming? And he'd stop coming sooner rather than later, if she continued to blurt out heavy-duty "daddy" expectations such as that last comment!

Carrie glanced furtively at Tyler. He was fetching a toy for Dylan, chatting with both boys. Apparently he'd taken her remark as hypothetical and not pertaining personally to himself. Thank heavens for that?

But Carrie was wrong. Her words were echoing in Tyler's head. A father's role? Is that what he'd been playing with the Wilcox triplets?

Franklin chose that moment to stand up in the boat, and it toppled over, spilling both boys into the water. They bounced upright* laughing* buoyed by their life jackets, and Tyler caught them and plunked them back in the boat before Carrie could reach them. Very smart and very strong ... a father's role ...

And then: "Oh, he—drat!" Tyler exclaimed and was thankful he'd caught himself because Emily, that little parrot, yelled "Drat!" at the top of her lung§. Her siblings immediately picked up the chant.

"All this talk about fathers made me think of my own," Tyler said grimacing. "He and his wife want me to come out to his place on the Fourth, this Wednesday evening. How would you and the kids like to go along, Carrie? Sort of a test run for the beach excursion* although I promise we'll

have a much better time at the beach than with the Tie-maines."

He was inviting her to meet his family? But that milestone paled in light of their intimidating identity. They were the Tremaines! "We'd love to come," Carrie said quickly, before she could chicken out and refuse.

"An invitation from Richard Tremaine is really a combined executive, paternal command," Tyler explained as he drove Carrie and the triplets to the Tremaine estate in an exclusive Maryland suburb. "Fm glad you and the kids are joining me for Dad and Nina's foolhardy attempt at a good old-fashioned holiday picnic."

Carrie stole a quick glance at him. She was still surprised he had invited her and the children to meet his family—although knowing Tyler, he hadn't viewed it in that context. He'd said they were his hedge against boredom and an excuse to make an early exit from the monstrously dull and stilted Tremaine faux family event.

"Why/aw* family?" Carrie asked, and for the first time since they'd discussed his mother's death in her kitchen all those weeks ago, Tyler talked about the Tremaine family, not Tremaine Incorporated.

"This one-big-happy-family pretense is phony and fake, no matter how much Dad and Nina might want it to be otherwise." Tyler scowled. "Nina is my father's second wife, he married her a couple years ago. She was a widow with a son and two daughters and Dad was the perennial widower. He'd dated over the years, of course, but according to legend he was too much in love with his dearly departed wife—my mother—to ever consider marrying again."

"Your mother died a long time ago, Tyler," Carrie pointed out quietly. She glanced back at the triplets, playing quietly with small toys as they sat strapped into their car safety seats, all in a line. They'd taken Carrie's car, which

was equipped to transport children. Tyler's collectible cars did not meet that requirement.

Would her children expect her to dedicate her entire life to the memory of their father? She recalled that she'd actually planned to do just that... until Tyler Tremaine had made living in the present so much more compelling than living in the past. Carrie stared at his profile, her cheeks flushing. "Do you really think that your father—uh—betrayed her memory because he married another woman three decades later?''